Don't expect a subscription content library to put the world at your fingertips.

The internet has revolutionised the way we consume content, supposedly putting everything we want at our fingertips – when and where we want it, rather than leaving us at the mercy of traditional content providers. New-world giants like Netflix and Quickflix are leading the way, but unfortunately all-you-can-eat subscription services can leave you picking through the scraps from the table.

Netflix, Rdio and the new Kindle Unlimited are portrayed as the Holy Grail of online content, offering all the movies, music and books you could want for only a few dollars each month. The subscription model is even extending to games with services like EA Access.

Subscriptions can offer good value for money, especially in busy households, but don't make the mistake of thinking access to these all-you-can-eat libraries is the same as wandering the aisles of your local Video Ezy, JB HiFi or Dymocks.

Go in search of a particular movie, album or book in a subscription library and you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Much of the content you're chasing simply won't be there. It's not just an Australian issue, subscription customers are treated as second-class citizens in the US as well.

Advertisement

Go to Quickflix, punch in the name of a dozen of your favourite movies and see how many are only available on DVD and not to stream. Now head over to Netflix and try the same test, you won't fare much better. It's not just new movies that are missing, you'll be lucky to find your favourite flicks from the 80s and 90s. You will however find a lot of B grade, straight-to-DVD rubbish that most people wouldn't pay for anyway.

It's a similar story with subscription music services. The promise of millions of tracks sounds amazing, but many of your favourite artists simply aren't there. Sometimes on Rdio you'll even find albums with half the tracks greyed out. Sneak into the US Rdio service and the same songs are often missing.

Kindle's new Unlimited service follows in their footsteps. With unlimited access to 600,000 eBooks from Amazon you might think that you'll never need to buy a book again, but you'd be wrong. Apart from a few high profile examples you're unlikely to find the book you're looking for, unless it's a free book which is already in the public domain.

You can't lay all the blame for this mess on the service providers, as they're at the mercy of the various rights agreements with the content providers. Quickflix would love to offer more top-shelf movies and has worked hard over the last few years to strike better deals. It's the same with music services. I'm sure that Rdio doesn't vindictively grey out tracks just to annoy paying customers, especially when it knows people can go elsewhere and steal the entire album for free.

Sometimes artists with plenty of clout deliberately withhold their content from subscription services. Led Zeppelin and Metallica held out until recently, while The Beatles and AC/DC are still playing hard to get. But most bands don't have this kind of power and rights deals are negotiated by their recording label.

Content providers like recording labels and movie houses seem determined to ensure that subscription services can never meet all of our needs, releasing just enough to encourage us to subscribe while still forcing us to pay on demand for the content we really want. To be fair, you only need to watch two or three shows on Quickflix or Netflix each month and they've paid for themselves. You'll break even on an Rdio subscription if you buy half a dozen fewer albums each year. Even so, you'll still end up spending money elsewhere unless you turn to BitTorrent.

Treating subscription customers as second-class citizens is a strategy which has served the industry well for decades, but it's starting to backfire as the internet puts more a la carte content at our fingertips, legit or otherwise. Subscription services address the "pricing and availability" issues cited by Google as key drivers of piracy, but content providers will need to address the gaping holes in the subscription libraries if they want to steer people away from BitTorrent.